Review: ORBITAL

Book: Orbital: a Novel by Samantha Harvey

Book Beginnings quote:  

Orbit minus 1: Rotating around the earth in their spacecraft they are so together, and so alone, that even their thoughts, their internal mythologies, at times convene.

Friday56 quote: 

Orbit 4, descending: Their hands are in sealed experiment boxes or assembling or disassembling ruggedised units or refilling the auto-release food pouches in the modules of mice, their feet in tethers at their work stations, their screwdrivers and spanners and scissors and pencils are drifting here and there about their head and shoulders, a pair of tweezers breaks loose and sails towards the air vents which, in their imperceptible sucking, are the resting place of all lost things.

Summary:

A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space—not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live (Publisher).

Review: Orbital is not my usual reading fare. I rarely read science fiction but if I do the setting is usually in another world or in a far off time. This novel is set on the International Space Station in current time. The astronauts on board are fictitious, or more correctly they are probably an amalgam of the 280 astronauts who have lived on or visited the station since its inception in 2000. When I began reading the book I kept wishing it was nonfiction. Though I've been aware of the I.S.S. since it first launched, I know very little about it. Here was my chance to learn more. But as I read on I realized that author Samantha Harvey did her homework. It was evident that she did her research about what life on the space station is like. The quote for Friday56 shows a bit of what I learned -- in order to stand at their work the astronauts have to put their feet in tethers; items not secured will float around and move toward the air vents. In another section I learned the astronauts sleep in a chamber about the size of a phone booth, loosely attached to the wall so they won't float off. One character said he slept like a bat, upside-down. There is no up or down in space. Their tours up in the space station usually last nine months. It is critical they take care to exercise every day so their muscles don't atrope. Keeping a healthy mind is vital. Isolation and detachment would so easily destroy a psyche.

As the space station rotates the earth sixteen times in one 24-hour period the astronauts spend a lot of time looking out the window at the beautiful planet we call home. Circling 250 miles above Earth, politics, pollution, and other human conditions are smoothed out. Here is where I think Harvey's story really shines -- Orbital becomes a meditation, a song for Mother Earth. Harvey also pans out and helps us view man's time on Earth. Starting billions of years ago, she looks at the cosmic calendar of the universe and life. If creation started on January 1st, life on Earth started on September 14th, the dinosaurs appeared on Christmas Day. "[M]id-afternoon on New Year's Eve [mammalian things] had evolved into their most opportunistic and crafty form, the igniters of fire, the hackers in stone, the worshippers of god, the tellers of time, the sailors of ships, the wearers of shoes, the traders of grain, the discoverers of lands..." (171). We, mankind, have been on earth for less than a cosmic day in this history of the universe and look at what we've done -- for good or for bad.

The International Space Station is getting old. Cracks are appearing that no amount of epoxy or duct tape can mend. It is likely that the current astronauts on the station right now will be its last inhabitants. Orbital is also an elegy to the station itself.

Orbital is remarkable and very memorable. It won the Booker Prize on Tuesday, which didn't surprise me at all. I agree with the Booker Prize Committee who said of Orbital it is a "beautiful, miraculous novel."

My rating: 4.75 stars. Why not five? It starts out a bit slow but after that it builds to a wonderful finale where the songs of the different planets in our galaxy are compared. On Earth, "a fumbled harmony takes shape. The sound of very far-off voices coming together in a choral mass, an angelic sustained note that expands through the static. You think it'll burst into song, the way the choral sound emerges full of intent, and this polished-bead planet sounds briefly so sweet" (207).

-Anne